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LA Festival of Books Saturday & Sunday

This is my second time going to LA Festival of Books and it was such an amazing experience once again. I really cannot recommend attending this at least once if you have the chance. Especially if you are a book lover there is just such amazing things going on during this festival it is well worth attending. Last year I volunteered both days and that was a lot of fun! I got to escort authors and sit in for their conversation which was really fun. This year my sister and I just decided to go and have the day for ourselves and have fun. I always like to make a plan for the day just to kind of have a schedule to follow. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with these kinds of situations cause I am always afraid something’s not going to go right.

SATURDAY:

So on Saturday my sister and I got there at about 8:30ish and sat down. The only conversation we had was at 11 A.M. with Sarah Dessen (Saint Anything), Emery Lord (The Start of Me and You), Robyn Schneider (The Beginning of Everything), and Meg Wolitzer (Belzhar), moderated by Amy Spalding (Kissing Ted Callahan). This was such a great conversation! I loved everyone on this panel. I mean the wisdom that they had was so amazing and Meg Wolitzer would just throw down knowledge when you least expected it. Definitely happy that I attended this conversation. Some amazing quotes I wanted to share from the conversation.

“I want songs about my girlfriends, who have been the great loves of my life.”

-Emery Lord

“It’s art there aren’t rules.”

-Emery Lord

“Everyone gets to be Peter Pan when you read YA.”

-Robyn Schneider

“Can I have monster powers and fly?”

-Robyn Schneider

Some funny and very insightful comments from the authors. Just an amazing talk overall. After the talk was the signing and I got to meet Sarah Dessen! I mean I got to talk to her and she told me I was her #1 fan! I mean it was just so amazing that she said that to me! I really wanted to cry and just like hug her, but I didn’t want to be weird! Sarah was so amazing though because I brought ten books to get signed but when I told her I planned to go to her May 5th event she said to bring the last two to get them signed there. It was such an awesome experience meeting her and being able to talk to her! She did say my This Lullaby was a well-loved book.

I ended up buying Robyn Schneider’s book The Beginning of Everything because she was so adorable and funny and she made me want to read her book. After we got done with the signing we made our way over to the Ray Stark Theater to wait in the stand by line to attend the conversation with Jesse Andrews. Which ended up being the actual Me and Earl and the Dying Girl movie! While we were waiting in the stand by line this woman walked up and recognized my sister from YALLWEST and decided to hand her two tickets for the event. It was awesome and so we were able to go in and see the movie, which was amazing guys! I mean seriously it was just simply amazing! So funny and smart and I loved every second of it and I highly suggest you go and see it when it comes out!

After seeing the movie we then headed to the courtyard where we received a free book to be signed by the author! Which was so awesome. Another book that I am so excited to read!

That was pretty much my Saturday! It was such a fun day. Not what I had planned but definitely really fun!

SUNDAY:

We got there at about 9ish and walked over to the Epic Reads booth to attend the Gris Grimly signing. While we were there I.W. Gregorio came to do her signing so I ended up buying her book because it looks absolutely amazing and she was amazing and nice and really cute!

This was so amazing because I love Gris Grimly! I mean he is such an amazing artist and I wasn’t able to meet him last year so I was so excited to finally meet him! After seeing him we made our way over to the L.A. stage to see Jason Segel! He was so funny! I had a book made out to my sister and my nephew Rex and Jason asked if Rex was a human, because he might be a dog. I asked if he signed to dogs often and he said he signed to all sorts of things.

As my sister was waiting in line for Jason I ran over to get my sister’s Jandy Nelson books signed and ended up buying two books. Mosquitoland and There Will Come a Time, which I heard great things about both. After that my sister and I made our way to the YA section, which has some amazing booths! HarperCollins/Epic Reads, Once Upon A Time, and Random House all had booths set up with some great authors! Epic Reads had Gris Grimly, Victoria Aveyard, and Anna Carey. Once Upon A Time booth had Ann Aguirre, Leila Sales, and Morgan Matson.

Random House had Jennifer Nivan and Nicola Yoon. If you purchased something at the booth you got a free ARC of Nicola Yoon’s book Everything, Everything! Over all Sunday was super crazy and the morning was running back and forth between booths but it was amazing and I saw a lot of authors. Also if you bought something at the EpicReads booth you got the *book shimmy* tote, so I got that signed by some authors such as Robin Benway, David Leviathan, Gris Grimly, Anna Carey, Jennifer Nivan, Lelia Sales, David Arnold, Morgan Matson, I.W. Gregorio, Etc. I was really excited to finally get a book shimmy tote! I also got some buttons and bookmarks and art prints!

I also meet a couple artists. Chris Ayers was diagnosed with cancer and while he was in chemo he started drawing an animal a day. After he got healthy he started publishing his books called The Daily Zoo and selling them. He has The Daily Zoo 1, 2, and 3, The Daily Zoo Goes to Paris, and My Daily Zoo: An activity book. His drawings were so amazing that I ended up buying two prints of his and magnets!

Look at how cute they are! I can’t wait to get them framed and be able to hang them! The other artist was a man named Travis Hanson who wrote books titled Adventures for a Lazy Afternoon. They are really cute books. I got a print because it said Dragon Defender! I mean how could I not get that print!

It was a great weekend and the weather wasn’t bad. It was sunny but had a great cool breeze! I saw so many great authors some of which recognized me from YALLWEST which is always cool and I got a lot of really cool things! So that was my weekend. Because this weekend took so much out of me that I haven’t been reading much, I’ve also been watching way to much T.V. but I plan to read a lot more! What did you guys have going on this weekend? Anything fun?